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Friday, 7 June 2013

The “Fairphone,” a phone that purports to approach smartphone design in
the most ethical way possible from every conceivable angle, opened for
preorders last Friday. The phone uses only conflict-free resources wherever possible, it has an open design, and it is marketed in a transparent way to customers.

The way many gadgets are made—smartphones and tablets especially—has
been called into question by several investigations into supply chains
and sources, in particular those of Apple and its Foxconn factories.
According to a New York Times report last year, suppliers put out phones
hand-assembled by allegedly underage, often underpaid workers operating
in unsafe conditions.

The company making the Fairphone
purports to be ultra-transparent about its material sourcing and
manufacturing process, getting conflict-free materials wherever possible
and highlighting unfair practices with a view toward changing them. The
phone will feature a Mediatek 6589 quad-core CPU, 4.3-inch qHD display,
8-megapixel camera, 16GB storage, dual-band SIM
(GSM850/900/1800/1900MHZ, WCDMA 900/2100MHz), user-replaceable battery,
and microSD card slot. It will run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with a
“special interface developed by Kwame Corporation,” which the company
notes is “also open.”

While we are a bit skeptical that a small
company looking to assemble and ship 5,000 phones will be able to have
much impact on the gargantuan gadget supply chains in place, the desire
to give users as much control over hardware and software as possible is
something to be welcomed. The phone will initially be available only in
Europe, priced at a flat €325 ($418). Production will begin once 5,000
preorders are in place, with shipments to begin in the fall.